Wolverine Watch: Expectations On The Down Low

Michigan enters the 2021 football season with outside expectations as low as they’ve been since 2009.

You remember that year, preceded by a lengthy offseason unencumbered by a bowl game. New coach Rich Rodriguez had just gone 3-9, suffered lots of ship jumping and enough howls to change the name from Wolverines to Wolves.

This is different … or it’s supposed to be. Jim Harbaugh came in to turn it all around. He carried the golden arm when he played at Michigan, and figured to come in with the golden brain to right all the wrongs of 2008-2014, broken up by a glimpse-of-hope exception season in 2011.

When Harbaugh led Ohio State in 2016, 17-7, late in the third quarter in Columbus, anything seemed possible. This was it. The misery of no Big Ten championship since 2004 was about to get chop-blocked.

It didn’t happen that way. The Buckeyes rallied. Their fans belched Sulphur and shrieked insurrection. Those in striped shirts fell in line, and OSU won in overtime.

Now, beating the Buckeyes isn’t even to be discussed. The focus is on taking down Western Michigan, to reach half of Michigan’s 2020 victory total.

Okay. You have to start somewhere.

You don’t have to end at 6-6, 7-5, or 8-4, but that’s what a lot of folks are banking on right now. It’s a bracing thought, but that’s where things stand in many minds.

Michigan’s job is to change those minds. Not in as dramatic a fashion as Juwan Howard’s crew did in going from picked No. 6 in the Big Ten to conference champions and Elite Eight participants.

But it’s time to show something. It’s time to show that all of the change — in the staff, on the roster, behind the scenes — represents more than bubble-wrapping the ship on April 14, 1912.

One thing’s certain. Those covering the Wolverines won’t likely be accused of overselling Michigan’s chances for the fall.

“That’s not a real fun thing to think about, how I’m going to feel if Michigan is 7-5,” noted Dennis Fithian, local sports talk radio host.

“If Michigan went 8-4 — and if I had to pick today, that would be my selection — it’s really going to come down to the details. What happens in those four games?”

Notice, it’s not a discussion of whether this is the breakthrough year to knock off OSU, to make it to Indianapolis, to win the Big Ten championship, to make the playoffs. It’s how things go in the multiple losses expected.

Sort of like heading for the point of no return, just above Niagara Falls, and trying to guess how much the landing is going to hurt.

“If you go to Wisconsin and fight to the fourth quarter, lose in a one-score game to the Badgers; if they go to Penn State, and it’s kind of a similar thing; and they really are competitive against Ohio State, that’s going to be the one that’s worth four or five times the amount of those other ones,” Fithian said. “You have to throw another loss in there. It could be Washington — that one kind of feels like a coin flip.”

That sort of pre-season palaver sounds like pre-1997 talk, when the Wolverines rose up for a national title. But make no mistake. This isn’t then.

There’s no Charles Woodson on the roster. There’s no guarantee of a Brian Griese behind center, with the best QB in the history of football riding the pine behind him. And if there are half the future NFL players here now that there were then, more than a few folks will be shocked.

Hope is not a strategy. But Michigan fans hope those inside Schembechler Hall have a strategy that will begin to set things aright, sooner rather than later.

“If they’re in all of those games, and you see a lot that’s encouraging, that’s what it’s going to be all about,” Fithian offered. “Last year, they weren’t in those losses. They should have never lost to Michigan State …

“There was a double-digit loss to Indiana. The Wisconsin game, it felt like they quit in that game. The Penn State game, they lost by double digits. There was nothing to feel good about in any of the Michigan losses.

“It’s a hard thing to do, to feel good about a loss to begin with.”

It’s a miserable thing to do. It’s what Purdue, and Maryland, and Rutgers, and Indiana, and other pedestrian programs have done for years and years. Not Michigan. Not traditionally.

The Wolverines themselves aren't in that mindset — guaranteed. Their job is to show up to the point that they bring everybody else along with them.

---

• Talk about this article inside The Fort

• Watch our videos and subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Listen and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolverine

• Sign up for our daily newsletter and breaking news alerts

• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolverineMag, @Balas_Wolverine, @EJHolland_TW, @AustinFox42, @JB_ Wolverine, Clayton Sayfie and @DrewCHallett

• Like us on Facebook